Famous composer's daughter to play role in orchestra's 'Music and Poetry'

‘Music and Poetry’

The Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra’s “Music and Poetry,” which includes narration from Jamie Bernstein over her father’s “Symphony No. 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety,’ starts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Union Colony Civic Center.

Other performers include pianist John Musto, Mezzo-Soprano Amanda Crider and poet Lisa Zimmerman.

Related Media

Jamie Bernstein once wanted to be a musician. But she was a singer-songwriter who became jaded with the industry and could not overcome the anxiety of, among other things, being a Bernstein.

“I was so worried about making a mistake on stage,” Bernstein said in a phone interview, “and then I had my children, and I just said, ‘Oh, forget it.’ ”

Now she’s found a way to continue with her love for music without actually playing it. She’s the daughter of Leonard, the famous composer (“West Side Story” was his most known one) and conductor, and she will talk about his life, as well as his “Symphony No. 2 ‘The Age of Anxiety’ ” at Saturday’s Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra concert.

She did record an album, but after her father died in 1990, the joy of making music died, as well. She still writes songs, but she finds joy in other things now, including rafting the Colorado River in Moab, Utah, during a friend’s annual chamber music festival. The trip includes music every night and dinners and sleeping in tents, and all of it, she said, “is pretty much the most fun you can have in life,” despite water levels so low last year that they got stuck among the jagged rocks four times.

A large part of her work now is to narrate pieces of music for classical concerts. She’ll talk about her father Saturday for the Greeley Philharmonic, but she will travel the country to discuss a number of subjects, including a recent gig on Mozart, where she dressed up as the composer as an 11-year-old.

“I’m not in the habit of dressing up,” Bernstein said. “I think that’s kind of lame, but that’s what came up that time. I usually talk about the music the audience is going to hear. It varies quite a bit.”

Yet the narrated concerts, which include those in Carnegie Hall and for the New World Symphony in Miami, should be fun, she said.

“I want the talks to be engaging so they won’t think concerts are stuffy,” she said. “I wouldn’t write about a piece of music I wasn’t excited about, and so my natural enthusiasm comes through.”

She stumbled into a career of narrating concerts, and she believes she learned how to present in part by watching her father during his Young People’s Concerts, which were broadcast in prime time on TV starting in the late-1950s.

“I must have gotten some of it through osmosis,” she said. “I wasn’t studying those concerts exactly, but some part of me must have absorbed how he put those together.”

Narrating about her father took research, just like the rest of her subjects. It was disorienting at times because it was as if she was researching just another famous musician and not the man who played with her growing up or would act silly to make her giggle. She re-reads portions of a biography on her father written by a family friend, Humphrey Burton, when she talks about him.

“In a way I do separate the two because there’s a part just for me and my family, and that’s very precious,” she said. “I’m happy to share parts of that life, but it’s definitely different than most of what I talk about.”

The presentations take time to prepare because she writes them out. She considers herself a writer first, and that helps her when she’s in front of an audience.

“I have the words right in front of me,” she said. “It’s not that panic thing. I’m only talking.”

Now she gets to do many of the things she loved about being a musician, including hanging out and being friends with them, without making music herself and fighting the pressure that comes from that.

“I get to share music that I’m into,” Berstein said, “and my intention is to show everyone how cool it is.”